Congress has another week to avoid a resumption of the partial government shutdown. Fingers crossed.

OPM has named  Clare Martorana to be its new chief information officer according to the Federal News Network. Ms. Martorana joins OPM from the U.S. Digital Service. Ms. Martorana “becomes the fifth CIO since 2015.”

Studies, studies, studies —

• Express Scripts released its 2018 Drug Trends Report. According to the Center for Biosimilars, ESI expects U.S. drug spending to rise about 2% over the next three years. However,

Inflammatory drugs comprised the costliest therapy class for the third year in a row, costing employers $174.45 per member per year, up 14%. Diabetes came in second at $114.85 per member per year, an increase of 4.1%. Spending on insulin, which accounts for 15.3% of diabetes prescriptions, increased just 0.3% in 2018, with a 1.5% decline in unit costs and a 1.8% rise in utilization. In 2018, patients paid 16.9% of total insulin costs, an average of $43.19 per prescription, up $3.33 from 2017.

• Healthcare Dive reports that “More effective primary care could save emergency departments an estimated $8.3 billion annually, according to a new Premier analysis.” “The [Premier] report notes that chronic disease patients visiting EDs are often uninformed about how to manage their disease and often lack access to primary care services.” These expensive ED visits could be prevented if the patients regularly visited primary care providers. In this regard Health Payer Intelligence reports that Blue Cross’s Medicare Advantage experiment with using Lyft for members needing non-emergency care trips is paying off.